


At The Renaissance Festival

by bluesey182



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: F/M, also there's some swearing and jude shoves cardan, and possibly a trigger warning for self harm but it doesn't actually happen and it's more implied, enjoy :), some crying so fighting lots of feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-11 19:14:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19933126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluesey182/pseuds/bluesey182
Summary: Jude's a mess and Vivi gets her a job at the Ren fair and, of course, Cardan has to show up and ruin it.





	At The Renaissance Festival

People talked about the stages of grief as if they were a linear progression when in reality they showed up when they pleased in whatever order they saw fit. Jude seemed to swing violently from one stage to another. One moment she’d be a raging fire breaking whatever was closest to her and throwing her ring with enough force to chip the paint on her bedroom wall, the next she’d be scrambling to find it again and clutch it to her chest while she sobbed until the daylight left her room. She largely ignored Vivi’s attempts to cheer her up or get her off the couch. Sometimes her older sisters’ attempts at cheerfulness were met with bitter shouts. Sometimes Vivi would not so kindly pull the blankets off Jude only for Jude to continue to stare lifelessly into space. 

For the first few weeks Vivi left Jude to grieve however she needed to. That was until the night Jude got her hands on some alcohol and ended up with alcohol poisoning, a broken mirror, and a fight with Vivi in the bathroom while Jude clutched a broken part of the mirror and screamed while Vivi held her down. After Jude stopped struggling she sobbed to her older sister that the girl in the mirror said  _ he _ was in her veins and she just wanted him out. She just wanted him out. After that, Vivi refused to leave her in the apartment alone.

At night Jude plotted out ways to kill Cardan until her numbness and anger broke and she was left sobbing and wishing he would just hold her in a very un-Cardan-like way. She wanted to go home. The problem was that now, technically, she  _ was _ home. 

But she wasn’t with him.

After two months of this, Vivi decided it was time for Jude to get a job. She burst into their apartment where Jude had been watching TV with Oak to very proudly brandish a sheet of paper in Jude’s face.

“It’s perfect!” Vivienne shrieked with over-the-top excitement. Jude tried her best to stare passed it at the TV. “Jude.”

“What,” she responded flatly.

“Look at this.”

She finally looked up with a huff to tell Vivi exactly how she felt about being disturbed. But before she could actually read it for herself, Vivi flipped the paper over so Jude was looking at the back.

“There’s this thing called the Renaissance festival,” Vivi began explaining animatedly, “and it’s in town right now. Heather used to talk about it all the time before… Anyway, they’re looking for some extra people to hire and I figured you could apply to be one of those people that teaches people how to fight with swords. I think it will be good for you.”

Jude felt her cheeks warm with displeasure.

\---------

She had been reduced to  _ this. _

Jude Duarte, seneschal of the King and then made Queen of Elfhame, had been reduced to picking up trash and repainting the signs at the Renaissance festival--which was, at best, a poor imitation of the dress and lifestyle that she had spent the formative years of her life immersed in. It was ridiculous and it made her miss home even more. Vivi was wrong, this wasn't helping.

On top of that, Jude quickly discovered that she wasn’t nice enough for the mortal world. When a boy her age tried to hit on her she snarled until he went away. When a younger girl accidently hit Jude’s hand with a wooden sword while Jude was trying to teach her how to use it, she yelled until the girl cried. Her boss quickly suggested that maybe she was “more fit for doing maintenance work” where she “wouldn’t be interacting with the people”. Which was how she ended up repainting a sign that some idiot kids had vandalized overnight. 

Oh, how far she had fallen. 

“Yo dude!” She heard someone yell from behind her. She was about to turn around when the man’s voice finished with “Those are some  _ sick  _ elf ears!” and she decided the voice was not talking to her. 

As she continued to slap red paint onto the wooden sign before her some other exclamations joined in with the first. 

“--don’t have tails,” finished one.

“--get it to move?” drifted another.

“Where did you get--” began a third.

And then, worst of all, the voice from both her dreams and her nightmares said, “Jude.”

Her blood ran cold. In her head she could see him, dressed in his splendid yet ridiculous clothes with that crown askew on his gorgeous hair above those haunting eyes that pierced through her soul no matter how many walls she tried to put up. But this was not, _could not_ , be happening. When she turned around he would not be standing there with his stupid pointed ears and that _fucking_ tail and those dark eyes.

She turned around.

Cardan was standing there. She blinked, and blinked, and blinked again for good measure and yet he still stood there--appearing like the ghost her heart had been calling for in the night.

“Jude,” he repeated.

“What the fuck are you doing here.” It wasn’t a question, more a command, though Jude knew he didn’t have to follow hers anymore.

“We need to talk.” 

“We don’t  _ need  _ to do anything. In case you forgot, you banished me from faerie.”

He looked around them briefly. “We’re not in faerie.”

“Oh! You’re right, how silly of me? We’re in the mortal realm,” her voice dripped with so much icy sarcasm she could feel it burning her throat. Or were those tears? “And come to think of it, I’m a mortal and you made me Queen so I hereby banish Cardan Greenbriar from the mortal realm.”

Cardan closed his eyes for a second as if he were about to lose his temper. “With that one phrase you are so close to understanding something that’s been right in front of your face this whole time.”

She felt her face heat. “Are you calling me stupid?”

“I did not think you were but you are beginning to prove otherwise.”

There was a satisfying wet  _ slap  _ that echoed through her ears as she threw a fistful of paint onto the King of Elfhame’s face. She had nearly forgotten the can of paint in her hands but as her vision turned red her hands took control and before she knew it Cardan’s face was painted red as well. She laughed, but when it reached her ears it didn’t sound like hers. 

All she felt was anger. Anger at him for hurting her, anger at herself for caring, anger at Madoc for bringing her to faerie in the first place. But more than anything she felt anger at the universe for letting her fall for Cardan. It was too much. She threw more paint on him.

By now Cardan was shaking with his own anger and Jude felt some satisfaction at making him feel even an ounce of what she’d felt since he exiled her. 

This time her laugh was cut short by something cold splashing down the front of her shirt. With a gasp Jude looked down at her white tee to see it stained with red. The bastard had thrown paint on  _ her _ . Sure enough, there he stood with his hand covered in the offending color and that wicked grin on his face. She was loathe to admit she missed that grin.

“You don’t get the send me away from the only home I remember just to show up at my job to make me miserable again!” She shrieked and punctuated the last word with another glob of paint thrown at him. 

“If you would stop acting like a child and listen to me,” Cardan growled but was cut off by more paint in his face.

“I don’t want to listen to you. For the longest time I wanted an explanation, but now I just want you gone.” 

Jude began to notice from the corner of her eye that they were drawing a crowd. 

“Jude-”

“LEAVE!”

“Jude, stop-”

“Go back to ruling your faerie subjects and leave me alone!”

“Jude!”

She threw more paint at him. “You gave me hope! You made me think I could be safe again and then you tossed me out like I meant nothing!”

“And you killed my brother!”

Silence fell between them. Jude heard a collective intake from the crowd around them and realized with a brief glance in their direction that they thought this was some kind of act. With talk of faerie and murder, how could they think anything else?

She stepped dangerously close to him and lowered her voice, making sure every word would cut like a knife. “Yes, Cardan,” she growled sweetly, “I killed your brother. He made me kiss him while he thought I was under his control and he treated me like I was his pet. So yes, when he came at me and I realized it was him or me, I decided he should be the one to die.”

With each word his eyes seemed to get impossibly wider--her words hitting their mark exactly as intended. But instead of feeling victorious, Jude just felt empty. 

“Tell me you would rather I have died,” she demanded.

No response.

Jude shook her head and took a measured step away from him. “That’s what I thought.” She felt her shoulders fall, her eyes water over, as she whispered, defeated, “Please just leave.”

Before he could respond though a voice boomed from behind her, “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?” She spun around--mostly so she wouldn’t have to keep looking at Cardan as the tears in her eyes spilled over--to see her boss storming towards them. His vein comically bulged out of his forehead. When he finally got up to her he snarled, “You’re fired. Get the fuck out of here. Both of you!” This last part he directed at Cardan.

“No problem,” Jude snapped as she thrust the bucket of paint--or what was left of it--into her bosses hands. Without turning to see if Cardan was following her, she began to stomp her way to the gates of the fair. She hated the tears streaking her face. Hated how they kept falling faster. She just wanted  _ out  _ but she also didn’t want to be anywhere. She was tired. So tired. 

She began to run. She ran until she was through the gate, ran till she reached the parking lot, ran until her lungs ached, ran until she couldn’t see passed her tears any longer. With each sob she could feel her heart breaking (impossibly) more, could feel the shards stabbing into her insides until she thought for sure she would bleed out. 

But even with her break-neck pace, faeries were still faster and Cardan soon caught up to her. His hand closed around her upper arm and demanded her to stop in her tracks or else topple over. Resentfully, she stopped and spun around to face him and with all the anger and hurt inside her she shoved him against his chest.  _ Hard.  _ Yet he barely staggered back. Still, it felt good to release that pent up energy. She shoved him again. He continued to stand there without any hint of defending himself.

“Fight! Back!” With each word she shoved him again and when she was met with no response, she hit her open palm against his chest. “Fight me back!”

“No, Jude.”

“Do it!” 

Blindly, she continued to push against his chest, each shove getting weaker than the last. Finally, his arms went around her so he was holding her from behind as her knees gave out. Though his grip wasn’t overbearing, she was crying hard enough that she couldn’t unpin her arms from where he held them to her sides. He fell to his knees as she collapsed onto the ground and held her as she sobbed and stopped struggling against him. She could feel his heart hammering against her spine and she tried to will it to stop. Just  _ stop  _ already. Emotions warred inside her. She both wanted to curl up further into his arms and stab him in the throat. In the end, she did the former.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered so quietly she wasn’t sure if he even really said it. “I can explain. Come home, Jude. Come home.”


End file.
